Atheist
by sleepysheepdog
Summary: Drabbles. Carlisle can see a new brand of faith taking hold.
1. origins

Disclaimer: Owning Twilight would be like owning an aggressive pit bull because it would only end up biting me in the ass.

So, Edward's mother "pleads for her son's life", eh? Everyone in this world knows that any mother worth her salt would be demanding that a doctor save her son's life, damn it, or she'll rip them to shreds.

And then I thought, what the hell was Carlisle thinking?

--

Twenty years after Bella settles in, a startlingly short amount of time and still longer than she'd expected, she realizes that there is a topic not up for discussion in the Cullen household.

Ever.

And that is why Carlisle changed them. Sure, she's heard the stories about forgiveness and compassion and giving immortal life. But Bella is older now and Bella knows better.

She knows that giving immortal life means stealing eternal life and that just as cruelty can be kindness, kindness can be cruelty.

_But_, she can see Alice smiling gently in her head and murmuring, _every normal family has a few secrets, right?_

-

Saplings grow tall and strong before his eyes, day after month after year and he's honing his craft. His punishment and his salvation.

He sleeps in trees to remind himself of what he is and who he is and how long he will stay that way.

"Forever," she snarls at him on her deathbed, sticky with sweat and gaunt with illness, "It will _literally_ be an _eternity_ before I forgive you if you don't save my son."

A doctor hears threats every day. He watches people disintegrate and curse him while they're at it. There are, of course, those who are grateful.

He can't remember those individually anymore, decaying as one into this endless cesspool of disease, but he can remember feeling thankful for them.

He feels respect for this one.

"I'm sorry," he insists, "There is only so much I can do."

"Don't lie to me, you bastard," she struggles to clench her fists and looks him in the eyes, "There is power in your blood and that I is why I fear you. I feel it. I know you can save him."

He turns his head to the bed next to hers where there lies a remarkably sick boy struggling through the hell of an epidemic and failing. Not even a man yet.

And he can't even do what she wants him to do to a man, much less a boy.

Her hair is thin and feels like flour. Her face is pale with sorrow.

"Or," her faint fierce voice challenges him, "Are you afraid?"

From those words until he watches Edward wake up and try to weep and then spend a week straight punching concrete and cars and his newly stone-plated torso to try to feel anything other than the insatiable emptiness, he believes that she's right.

That he's just afraid of saving people with what he really is. But it turns out that he's right; he's afraid of infecting them.

And having faced that fear, having become disillusioned to what he hoped he was wrong about all along, he feels no triumph.

-

He catches a glimpse of her shoulders first, encased in white cotton and gently rounded, molded into some ideal that he'd discarded long ago when he'd detached himself from dreams of spreading himself bare over a woman.

She reminds him of the lingering taste of that desire and it is then that he feels a burst of life behind the cage of his ribs, spread like fingers to protect the rest of his insides from the sudden light surpassing and engulfing the craving clawing at his throat.

She is pearlescent and she is the moon dropped from the sky and morphed into woman and she is mighty with her frail, feminine shoulders. If he was a werewolf, he would howl for her.

But, watching her step from the damp heavy canopy of trees and into the breathy sunshine, he knows that he is only a vampire and so he can only do what he does best:

He thirsts.

-

He is fortunate that she chooses to throw herself from that hopeless summit. It saves him from mourning her death in a few decades and it saves him from feeling guilt from finally breaking and taking her in the night long before that inevitable death.

Love, apparently, is something that strips away morals and every verse of the Bible he's recited late at night when he can do nothing but beg for sleep.

He wants to wrap her in fine furs and stroke the fragile skin from the tip of her eyebrow to her slant of her hairline and he wants to spread himself bare over her sweet face, her sweet eyes.

And so when he picks up her mysteriously still-breathing body from the bottom of the cliff, underneath the potent desperation is a damning relief.

He knows that if he were still a young man, he would take this as a sign from God.

But his eyes are dusty with the death of innocents and the fever of helplessness. Edward will not blame him when he returns home, cradling this woman in his arms.

This could be a sign from God that he is doing the right thing, but he is old enough to tell the difference from a miracle and self-justification.

Edward will see him as a savior. As just and noble and a shepherd.

But it has been a long time since Edward could truly read his thoughts and even longer since Carlisle felt willing to share them.

-

In Rosalie, he sees nothing but his own body lying on the cobblestone street, ravaged with the disease stilling the flow of his veins and the ascension of his soul.

He is so powerful in that moment when he recognizes someone as ruined as himself that he is powerless to stop from titling her neck for better access.

He notes her smeared lipstick and her bruised thighs and the ugliness that cloaks her.

And when he gives her back her splendor, the luster that she depends upon to keep control, he reasons that what he offers is perhaps not so evil.

-

When Rosalie kicks down the front door with a brown-haired man struggling for breath, he opens his palms to receive the boy.

-

No one can find the words to tell Bella that perfection is a lie.


	2. the lamb is a lie

Disclaimer: Why do I need to own Twilight when I can buy Syfy's new Alice off of Amazon?

I've decided all of my "The Twilight series never even considered this realistically! Or unrealistically! Or even considered it at all because it was all about Bella finally screwing Edward's brains out!" babblings will be confined to this pretty little thing.

So that means the title is pending.

I was pretty disappointed that Bella didn't go through the newborn stage. Sometimes being special is so anticlimactic. And this is supposed to be anything but anticlimactic.

--

Bella rips into the hiker with a force that she is unaware of, her daughter wide-eyed with confused bloodlust beside her.

A bite is not the word for the transaction that is going on here. This is not a business transaction and this is not anything coherent because this is a crime of passion. This is something to hide within herself later, futilely, because not being in control is so liberating.

Not being in control is the most freeing sensation that unlocks the chains binding her ribs together, rips the bars from her meek mouth, cuts the rope from her limp wrists.

She drinks from a screaming man like pearls are pouring from his neck, like she is a greedy pearl-deprived monster. Every time she swallows, priceless gems of unimaginable value slide down the tunnel of her neck.

Her perfect neck, unscathed.

Newborn-fever colors her eyes vibrant, tree-bark brown and luminous as murder, and he stops struggling completely.

He stops moving. A few seconds more and the pearls run dry with the pleading.

And soon, sooner than she wanted and too late for forgiveness, he swings limp in her arms.

Her arms are a noose and her mouth is a guillotine and then she draws an unnecessary gulp, swallows. She stops.

_Bella! _a voice resonates in her head and down to her toes. _Bella!_

Edward's voice is unmistakable and so is the little girl attached to the dead man's wrist by the teeth.

Bella doesn't tear out her own heart because Nessie is watching her mother, mouth stained with what could be strawberry jam, dressed like a pretty summer girl.

Swallowing the residual blood and poison in her mouth, she feels stronger.

Nessie slips her sweet hand into hers, and she realizes that not being able to dream means that she will always be carrying her nightmares around with her.

Edward was right.


	3. list of grievances

Disclaimer: Owning Twilight would lessen me as a person. And as a renowned specialist in Awesome, that's just not possible.

I don't think Meyer really gave much thought to the whole, "Oh, you brought me back to life after the tragic death of my child and the physical, mental, and sexual abuse I suffered under the hands of my crazy husband and my uncaring parents' image-conscious neglect and the fact that my maiden name is Platt? Pish posh! That's alright! I clearly have no pent-up anger and wasn't trying to kill myself _that much_!"

I can understand someone being a caring women, but it is hard to picture someone who was that determined to live and then that determined to die to just take resurrection with a sweet smile and an open heart.

--

She feels like Satan's got her in his satin grasp, his bloody bleeding hands, when the waking world gasps against her eyelids. The only thing she can feel is a cold so solidly painful that it burns.

Her skin is a suit of fire, pulled taut, and a hand that feels like a splash of water rests on her shoulder.

"Esme," a voice says, "Esme, drink."

She thinks he's giving her water, blessed water. Holy water. Cold and pure.

What tumbles down her throat like a laugh is warm and awakens in her a dirty lust just as it quenches it, burning it down and resurrecting it stronger and louder.

She can't believe she's not trembling and after a moment of reflection, as the fire recedes to a greedy flame flickering in the cradle of her belly, she opens her eyes.

She can't believe she's alive.

And she doesn't want to be. Fear and anger still her itching fingers. Wrath hardens her mouth.

But grief forces her dead hands to her face to feel the brittle seashells of her cheeks, forces her to face the voice.

"My son," she rasps, words a raspy cat's tongue, "my son."

She died with his name on her lips and now she has it trapped in her mouth. This must be her penance. This must be her punishment.

The voice says, "Emse, you must live. You have another chance. You can learn to be happy again."

His face is a silhouette of apology, but she has been docile all of her life. She realizes that breath is crucial for speaking and does so carefully as she traces the lines of his cheeks and his ears and his eyes.

He is magnificent. The thought is wet and rotten on her tongue.

She breathes again and she wants to be understood, "Dr. Carlisle," she says because she has never forgotten, to let him know there are things she can never forget, "I have been stifled and beaten and raped and my child is dead."

He keeps his lips closed and his eyes open, and that is more than she's ever been granted.

"I don't want another chance."

And then she grabs hold of the power scuttling in the cave of her heart, the pads of her fingers, and she lunges for his throat.

Carlisle knows how strong newborns are, knows how she will snap his neck—and then she does something surprising.

The woman who has captivated him enough for him to swarm to her death like a vulture wraps her tender fingers around his throat.

Carlisle knows this woman, though. He knows his chance at survival lies in giving into her. Surrendering to her.

That is something he's daydreamed about doing, however more intimate and less violent those dreams may be. Sex is surrendering, and this is just another form.

Carlisle is a good sort of man. He heals and hopes and tries and his hands are gentle and his eyes are kind.

But he is not above manipulation for the sake of his own life. If he is surrendering, it is only physically.

He has not relinquished control because he pushes his clear gaze into hers and says, "You are not your husband, Esme."

Her fingers spasm with the faltering grace of heartbreak and self-loathing and she releases him.

Shuddering, she releases him.

--

s i l v e r a u r o r a - You have contributed to my excessive self-confidence and as I write this, I am bloated with your grotesquely lovely loveliness. I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. It just seems like SMeyer is all about a painful, drawn-out kind of instant gratification. A lot of her characters hardly seem real because when they mess up, it doesn't feel like they're messing up. It feels like they're daintily stumbling, and that's different.

persephonesfolly - The writing style is something that came out of years of practice and began with a poem about a pretty unicorn when I was knobbly-kneed and bushy-tailed. I never was sufficiently able to describe the elegance of that horned-horse (who I named Atlanta), but at least it was nice pre-gaming for this. But, really, thank you. I really did want to communicate how destructive a lot of the characters are to themselves and others. I've always felt that Carlisle is a bit more sinister and a bit more gentle than he was written. Besides, he thinks his gift is _compassion_. If that's not a God complex, I want someone to gouge out my eyes with carrots.


End file.
